LSU men's basketball schedule released

Every road game to be televised for first time in school's history

A minimum 32-game schedule was announced by the LSU basketball program and the Southeastern Conference, which includes a return to pre-conference tournament play and for the first time in program history, every game away from the Pete Maravich Assembly Center will be televised live either regionally or nationally.

LSU and the SEC will play 18 conference games in the same format as last year, facing each of the other 13 league teams once and "rival" Texas A&M both home and away. Four other teams, which LSU faced just once last year - Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Georgia and Arkansas - will also meet the Tigers at both the Maravich Center, and LSU will go on the road in return contests.

This is the second season for Coach Johnny Jones at the helm of the LSU team. In his inaugural season, the Tigers finished with 19 wins and were 9-9 in the SEC, winning nine of their last 14 games.

The Tigers return All-SEC First-Team forward Johnny O'Bryant III, junior point guard Anthony Hickey and seniors Andre Stringer and Shavon Coleman. The Tigers also have a strong recruiting class coming in that is ranked in the consolidated rankings No. 5 in the country featuring Baton Rouge Mr. Basketball Jarell Martin.

For the second time in three seasons, LSU will take part in one of the ESPN Regional-owned Thanksgiving weekend events, this time the prestigious Old Spice Classic at the ESPN Wild World of Sports HP Field House just outside Orlando, Fla. LSU will face St. Joseph's in the opening round (Nov. 28, Thanksgiving) and either Memphis or Siena in the second round (Nov. 29). The final day of tournament play is Dec. 1 and all games in the tournament will be televised on the ESPN networks. The other four teams are: Oklahoma State, Butler, Purdue and Washington State.

Also with ESPN2 televising the season opener with UMass in the Tip-Off Marathon and ESPNU televising the Tigers trip to Lubbock for the game with Texas Tech, this will mark the first time in school history that every game away from the Maravich Center will be available on television.

"We are excited about the upcoming season and we look forward to a very challenging and demanding schedule," said Coach Johnny Jones. "We look forward to attacking the task at hand. We are glad that the networks have picked up all of our away games that will allow our fans to continue to follow the Tigers when we are on the road."

LSU is beginning home-and-home series this year with UAB (home), UMass (away) and Texas Tech (away).

Under new rules established this season by the NCAA, the official start of practice date for the LSU men's program is Oct. 1.

LSU will be featured 15 times on the ESPN family of networks, with four appearances on the SEC Network, two on the Wednesday CSS-CST package and once each on CBS and FSN. CST and other networks will make their non-conference selections from the remaining home games in the weeks ahead.

In the SEC, each of the 126 games will be available to be seen from anywhere in the nation. ESPN or ESPN2 will televise 31 contests, ESPNU 18 and CBS Sports six. Additionally, eight games will be offered on ESPN3. The SEC's games on ESPN platforms are exclusively branded as the "SEC on ESPN."

The over-the-air SEC Network will televise 40 intra-conference games while Fox Sports Net will show 13 contests and CSS 10. All 63 games will also air nationally on ESPN3.

All of the games included in the ESPN package (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, SEC Network, Fox Sports Net and CSS) will be available through WatchESPN, accessible online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets via the WatchESPN app, though ESPN on Xbox LIVE to Gold members and on Apple TV to fans who receive their video subscription from an affiliated provider. Each of the CBS Sports games will be streamed on CBSSports.com and CBS Sports Mobile.

The SEC Network will also produce and distribute a studio show each Saturday afternoon during conference play and at the SEC Tournament.

The SEC Basketball Tournament semifinals and championship game will be broadcast nationally on ABC. The SEC Network will televise the tournament games on Wednesday and Thursday in addition to the Friday night games. ESPNU will televise the two afternoon games on Friday at the tournament which this year will be played March 12-16 in Atlanta.

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LSU men's basketball schedule released

A minimum 32-game schedule was announced by the LSU basketball program and the Southeastern Conference, which includes a return to pre-conference tournament play and for the first time in program